Brandel Library

YM 2410: Adolescent Development and Issues

Finding Articles

Article Databases

Scholarly or Popular?

Use the following criteria to decide if a publication is popular or scholarly.

Scholarly Articles

 Popular Articles

Author Expert in the field, credentials and affilated university listed Journalist, freelance writer or staff writers
Length of article Longer more detailed content Shorter articles giving a brief overview
Intended audience Researchers, experts in the field General Public
Layout Includes an abstract, footnotes, list of citations. Does not follow a standard format, often a simple title
Images Charts, graphs, tables of data Colorful, eye catching photos
Vocabulary Specialized terminology, need extensive knowlege of discipline to understand text Written at the level to be understood by the general public

Find Full Text

Find Full Text image

If an article is not available as a PDF, you will see the Get a Copy button instead. Click on it to find out if the PDF is available from another library database, or to request it from interlibrary loan. 

Database Search Tips

ATLA Religion Database:

While searching for children's/youth ministry in the database will bring up results, the actual subject heading for articles in this area is "church work with youth." Use this in a subject search to pull up the best and most complete list of results!

PsycInfo, ERIC, and Sociological Abstracts: 

Use Truncation 

Adolescent, Adolescents, Adolecence
Teen, Teens, Teenage,  Teenagers

How do you search library databases for all those variations?  By using truncation!  By placing a truncation symbol at the end of a root word, you can search a database for all the variations of that word.

Many databases use an asterisk for the truncation symbol.

Example:
adolescen*  --- retrieves 
adolescent, adolescents, or adolescence
teen* -- retreives teen, teens, teenage, teenagers